POETRY
By Jason Kahler
Not on purpose. She makes the house payment one week and makes the same mortgage payment the next week. Words come harder now, like the wood of the Scrabble tiles but less glossy. The rules slip away: no contractions, no proper names, ZOOS but not NOY. As a police officer in Detroit, Mom once drew her gun while her partner diffused a bomb. Once, crowded in the back of a bottom dresser drawer, I found a black and white photograph of her in her uniform and thought it was Halloween. Mom stands serious and straight. While her partner decides—red wire or white—Mom covers the alley. Through the chaos and the brink, an unidentified figure dashes their direction, full speed and intent uncertain. Mom’s finger on the trigger. Mom’s finger tightening, the voice that would tell me to stop playing with the station wagon’s powered window calling out. I make the window go up, down, with the pulse of a song in my head. Halt. Halt. I break that powered window: it thunks permanently into the sleeve of the door with the cinematic trouble. And then her radio cracks he’s one of ours he’s one of ours and all the bombs diffuse. Mom likes the four-letter words. The big point three-letter sneaks. My words are longer but she scores more. She kills me with the Q.
This story originally appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 17.
Photo by Piotr Łaskawski